one hot summer (11 page)

“Margarita,
mi amor,
” Violeta called out to me as soon as I opened the car door. She was standing, waiting, under the portico of her house.
“Bienvenida!”
she said as she walked slowly to me.

The psychic didn’t drive, and didn’t own a car, so there were always places to park on the easement right in front of her house. That spared me time circling the block looking for a space large enough to accommodate my huge car. I could see that Violeta had been pottering around her garden, because she was carrying a straw basket filled with pink, red, and white roses. In her other hand was a menacing pair of oversize clippers.

I locked the Escalade, pressed the button on the keychain to activate the alarm, and sprinted up the walk to kiss her. Violeta took a good, long look at me and shook her head.

“
M’hija,
my daughter, you are troubled. It’s good that you’re here.” She carefully placed the clippers in the basket along with the roses and led me toward her house. “Come.”

I meekly followed her inside, already feeling more peaceful. Violeta could calm me in an instant. I also knew that I could unburden myself to her without her being judgmental. There weren’t too many people in my life whom I could say that about.

Violeta led me to the back room, pausing only to set down her flower basket on a table by the front door. She closed the door behind us and settled into her rocking chair, closing her eyes. I put my purse in the usual place on a stand by the door, sat down, and waited quietly for her to speak. During my first visit I had put my purse on the floor, which Violeta considered bad luck and which she swiftly corrected.

Her chair squeaked quietly as she began to rock back and forth. It might be a while before she spoke, I knew. Sometimes it took longer than others. I was bursting with impatience, though, and it felt like it was taking Violeta forever to get into the mood. I looked around the room, knowing there was nothing to do to hurry the process along. If I fidgeted too much, I would earn a lecture on patience.

Finally, Violeta stopped rocking and opened her eyes.

“You are very troubled, Margarita,” she said. “But it’s not the usual preoccupations that bring you here today.”

We both knew what she was talking about: my job, the pressures from Ariel and my family, and the big decision that was looming over my life. She closed her eyes again, but opened them quickly this time.

“I see Ariel hovering around you,” she said. Then she frowned. “But he’s not the only one. Ariel is fading away. Now there is another man around you.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said in a miserable tone of voice. “Because of the other man.”

Violeta looked puzzled. “Margarita, you’ve come to see me many times without ever mentioning this other man. And I have never seen him anywhere near you.”

For the first time, Violeta seemed positively annoyed. She clearly didn’t like being blindsided by me or by the spirits.

“That’s because this man—his name is Luther—was an important part of my life years ago,” I explained, somewhat apologetically. I certainly didn’t want to incur the wrath of Violeta or her spirits.

I hadn’t failed to notice that Violeta had immediately picked up on Luther. But, at the same time, she had failed to warn me about his reappearance in my life. I had been to see Violeta just a couple of weeks before my old lover arrived in Miami.

Once, during an early session, Violeta had warned me to avoid a black-haired Salvadoran named Melchor, who was going to bring a lot of trouble to the law firm. I was astonished when a man matching that description turned out to be a computer technician who put a virus in our computer network and deleted most of our files. I almost fainted when our office manager told me who had caused such havoc in our firm. I didn’t say anything to my partners about what Violeta had told me—they might have respected my inside connection to the world of spirits, but they also would have quickly removed my name from the letterhead.

It was troubling that Violeta hadn’t warned me about Luther. He had been watching me for years, he said. So why hadn’t Violeta picked up on it?

My life was on the verge of unraveling. I realized how much I counted on Violeta for support, advice, and for her vision. All of a sudden I felt alone and without support.
Dios mio.
I knew that no one was infallible, but I had somehow thought Violeta came close.

She closed her eyes. “He is a good man, this Luther. He loves you very much.” She opened her eyes, stared hard at me. “And you love him, too.”

“But I’m married to Ariel,” I said, hearing the despair in my voice. “And I love him, too.”

“
Sí,
I understand, Margarita,” Violeta said. “But the time will come soon when you will have to make a choice.”

She rocked softly, peacefully. I remembered all the times I had held Marti in my arms, rocking him to sleep. Cubans all love rocking chairs. Maybe it reminds us of the repetitive, rocking motion of the ocean and the movement of waves as they hit the shore.

“What should I do?” I asked her. “Please, counsel me.”

I knew that she wouldn’t tell me what to do. She never did. But she could point out my choices, and which ones I would do well to avoid.

Violeta was silent for a moment, her eyes staring into the distance. Then she nodded, as though someone had said something to her.

“This is a decision only you can make, Margarita,” she said. She tapped the sides of her chair as she rocked. “Tell me about this man. Why is he so important to you that you should be in such a state?”

How to begin to explain Luther?

I remembered the feeling that came over me when I saw him on the first day of classes at Duke. It was at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning, when all the first-year law students gathered for a presentation to mark the beginning of orientation. In order to wake myself up, I’d consumed an entire batch from the six-cup Cuban coffeemaker I brought with me from Miami. My heart was beating loudly in my ears, a sure sign that I was seriously wired. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but when I got to school it felt as though I might have overdone it. I walked from the parking lot to the law school, trying to remember if I had ever heard of anyone overdosing on Cuban coffee.

We were all congregated in the main reception area prior to being split into two groups. The first-year class was small, only about two hundred men and women, and it wasn’t hard to give the crowd a quick scan to see who I was going to be dealing with for the next three years.

I noticed Luther right away. He was standing in a corner, his body language completely at ease, his blue eyes taking everything in. His expression was quizzical, and slightly amused. He was the only person I saw who seemed to belong there.

We were all issued identification tags with our names and undergraduate schools. I maneuvered closer and learned Luther’s name, along with the fact that he had gone to Dartmouth. I was disappointed when we weren’t assigned to the same group, but later that day, after lunch, we landed in the same twenty-student campus tour.

I didn’t want Luther to know that the very sight of him made my knees quake, so I adopted a time-honored strategy: I behaved like a complete ice queen toward him. We shared three classes, and in those first weeks I barely acknowledged his existence. All the while, my attraction to him was growing. I hadn’t felt such a crush since Mariano Arango, my sophomore year at Penn. That had been understandable, since Mariano was an Argentinian polo player; the fact that he was also insufferably conceited took me a while to figure out. Luther, on the other hand, was an American, a quintessential WASP. And he seemed to be unaware that I was alive. It didn’t exactly seem like a recipe for romantic success.

My friend Lola was in a study group with Luther, and she asked me to join. I refused, knowing that I would surely flunk out of school if I tried to get anything done in close proximity to him. It was getting ridiculous. As it was, I was starting to have a hard time sitting in the same classroom with him. It wasn’t easy to listen to an aged professor drone on about contracts while constantly struggling not to look across the room to where Luther sat.

Another month went by and, to my complete amazement, Luther called me one day to invite me to dinner. There was no way to convey to Violeta the nervousness and apprehension I felt before that date. The day before, I got my period early. It seemed a catastrophe, and I knew my skin would break out and my body would bloat. Then I calmed myself by remembering that I was no longer in the seventh grade, and that guys couldn’t tell when girls were having their period, and that they knew periods existed and weren’t repulsed by the very idea. I was so anxiety-ridden that I actually took a diuretic, just to make sure my ankles didn’t swell up. Mamá would have been proud of me.

We female law students were supposed to be above such trifling concerns as our appearance but, as far as I was concerned, a woman was still a woman, even if she was sitting on the Supreme Court. Even now, years later, my heart still beats faster when I remember Luther standing in the doorway of my apartment that night, his blue shirt making his blue eyes jump out at me with the color of a wintertime lake reflecting the sky above. He seemed like a man totally at peace with himself, presenting himself to the world exactly as he was. It was up to others to take him or leave him, it seemed, and he would be perfectly content either way.

In hindsight, it was probably a blessing that I had my period for our first date—otherwise, I probably would have jumped into bed with him right after dessert. I was hyperventilating in the car just from being so close to him, and by the time we arrived at the restaurant I was in need of CPR. I cursed the fact that my female condition had effectively rendered me out of commission, but I remember thinking that God works in mysterious ways. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

I didn’t volunteer all these details to Violeta; I didn’t want to change her opinion of me as a sensible, self-assured woman. But now, closing my eyes, I saw the mess I made of my bedroom that night before the date. I had pulled out and tried on everything I owned in the hour before Luther picked me up, critically examining each outfit before discarding it in an ever-growing heap. Finally I decided that nothing I owned was suitable and hopped in my car for a frenzied trip to one of the trendy boutiques in Chapel Hill. I was a woman on a mission, in search of the perfect outfit for a date with a hot guy, and nothing would get in my way. I prayed that Violeta’s psychic abilities wouldn’t give her a window on my behavior that day.

I forced myself to return to the present, and to my scaled-down description of the role that Luther once played in my life.

“Me quita el hipo,”
I said simply.

No further explanation was necessary. Any Spanish-speaking person understands the significance of something that made such a strong impression that it “scared the hiccups out of me.”

Violeta nodded. “And now years have passed, and he has come back into your life. What effect does he have on you now?”

I didn’t have to think before replying. “The same.”

Violeta rocked with her eyes closed. “And Ariel. Tell me how you feel about him now.”

Violeta knew
all about Ariel, how we had met and the details of our life together. But she wasn’t asking me about the past. She wanted to know how Luther’s reappearance in my life was affecting my relationship with my husband. Because, obviously, it had. Nothing I said to Violeta was legally protected—even in freewheeling, loosey-goosey Florida, consultations with psychics aren’t considered privileged—but I knew I could tell her anything with total confidence that she would keep it to herself.

I had been able to talk about Luther without thinking, but now I had to take a moment to consider Violeta’s question. I could see by a slowing in her rocking that my hesitation hadn’t gone unnoticed. Violeta saw meaning in everything, and she interpreted the slightest reaction as revealing.

“No me quita el hipo,”
I said sadly.

Violeta just rocked.

After I said good-bye to Violeta I walked down the path to my car, looking at my watch. I had spent almost two hours with the psychic, a definite record. I was exhausted, and felt as though every bit of strength had been drained from my body. Normally I felt refreshed and rejuvenated after seeing Violeta, like I did after a long, restful sleep. Today, though, I felt disoriented, light-headed. It reminded me of how I used to feel sometimes at noon, during high Mass, when I had to sit for hours in a hot, stuffy, overcrowded church without anything in my stomach.

Once in my car, with the air conditioner running, I got out my cell phone and checked for messages. Although I was numb from everything I’d told Violeta, checking my phone was such a ritual that I did it without thinking. On the screen, I saw that there were three calls from Vivian. Three calls from anyone else would have panicked me, but it was perfectly in character for Vivian and her ADD personality. I was still reeling from the Violeta session, and not ready to deal with Vivian’s mania. If it was a really important matter, there would have been twelve calls instead of just three.

I didn’t want Violeta to see me sitting immobilized in my parked car in front of her house, so I started the motor and drove off toward the 826, the Palmetto Expressway, the first leg of my journey home. Just before I got on the ramp, though, I pulled over to the side of the road. I really didn’t feel steady enough to drive and, God knows, there were enough spaced-out drivers in Miami without my adding to the number.

Even though the air-conditioning was on full-blast, I was sweating. My nerves were on edge, and I needed to relax. So I did something I hadn’t done in a while: I unbuckled my seat belt, reached over to the glove compartment, and started rummaging around until I found the pack of Marlboros I stashed in there for emergencies. My current situation had reached the point at which a crisis cigarette was in order.

Before I lit up, I lowered the car window and tilted the seat as far back as it would go. I turned up the volume on the Gloria Estefan CD that had been playing softly. Then, as prepared as possible, I took out a cigarette and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger for a while. It was stale, as I feared, but it would have to do. I probably could have used a couple of tokes on a joint, but I was so unused to smoking anything that a couple of puffs on a Marlboro would be almost as satisfying.

I lay there listening to the music and trying to blow smoke rings. I wished I could stay in the car forever, never getting out, never having to make any of the decisions facing me. Up until a couple of days before, I had thought I was in a quandry about whether to stay at the firm or have another baby. Now that situation seemed perfectly manageable in comparison to Luther’s appearance in my life. Now I was seriously contemplating whether to stay with Ariel, or start a new life with my old lover. My session with Violeta, if nothing else, had clarified that choice.

Looking at the cigarette, I tried to wish it into becoming weed. I never indulged in drugs in any serious fashion, but I enjoyed the feeling of a light buzz. My first year at Penn I had smoked a little too much grass, which had scared me and made me back away from it. Now I smoked sometimes with Vivian and Anabel, not enough to get wasted but enough to get giggly. In a way we were reliving our youth, when we used to get high on hot summer nights at the Venetian pool in Coral Gables. Even at thirty-five, the smell of weed makes me think of those nights—kind of like an illicit madeleine.

A song had just finished when my cell phone rang out from the passenger seat. The sound of “Jingle Bells” startled me so much that I almost dropped the lit cigarette in my lap. I picked it up and saw Vivian’s office number displayed on the screen. Well, she had probably saved me from my own thoughts. I sighed and pressed the “receive” button.

“Hello, Vivian.”

“
Chica!
Where the hell have you been?” Vivian shrieked. I had to move the phone a couple of inches from my ear. “I’ve called you three times already. Your phone was turned off.”

“I went to see Violeta,” I explained, dragging on the Marlboro. “That’s why I turned the phone off. Right now I’m parked right by the entrance ramp on to 826.”

Vivian paused. “Are you smoking?” she asked.

I chuckled nervously, which of course Violeta took for an affirmative. I could never hide anything from her.

“Oh, God, Margarita,” Vivian said sadly. “If you need to see Violeta, and then smoke a cigarette afterward, that’s bad enough. But the worst part is that you’re sitting in a parked car by the expressway. Are you okay? Do you need me?”

Her voice raised an octave as she spoke. As close as we were, the last thing I needed was for Vivian to come and play Cuban Dr. Ruth. I knew I should change the subject from her proposed mission of mercy.

“What’s going on that you needed to reach me?” I asked. I knew that getting Vivian to talk about herself was always a good offensive move.

“I can’t tell you over the phone,” she said, lowering her voice. “That’s why I was calling. I need to set up a time and place for me, you, and Anabel to meet.”

It was totally unlike Vivian to keep any kind of secret. I hoped that she didn’t want to get together to deliver bad news.

“Have you talked to Anabel?” I asked.

“Yes. I reached her right away.” I could tell Vivian was having a hard time keeping herself from chastising me for not being available to her twenty-four–seven. “She has a meeting all afternoon, but she’s available tomorrow for lunch. Is that good for you?”

“Sure. Sounds fine.” I didn’t have my planner with me, so I had no idea whether I had anything planned the next day at lunchtime. But I was willing to reschedule just about anything, just to hear what Vivian needed to say only in person. I couldn’t remember a time she had ever kept anything from me.

“Listen, Margarita, are you sure you’re all right?” Vivian asked. “It’s not exactly normal to park by an expressway. Especially the Palmetto.”

I knew why she was worried. The Palmetto was an eight-lane expressway that bisected Miami east to west—the kind of highway that required nerves of steel and more than a little recklessness to drive on. It was full of speeding trucks with their overloaded rigs waving dangerously side to side, canvas tarps flapping wildly in the wind behind them. Motorists either drove so slow as to constitute a safety hazard, or else they raced thirty miles over the posted limit. There was no such thing as normal driving on the Palmetto—it was kill or be killed. The road was cracked, full of potholes and debris, but the Department of Transportation had apparently decided long ago that the situation was hopeless, and gave up on fixing it. The Palmetto made L.A.’s 405, or Boston’s Storrow Drive, seem relaxing and leisurely by comparison.

“I’m okay,” I said unconvincingly. “I just had an intense session with Violeta, and I need to get my head together before I drive anywhere. I’m going straight home now, really.”

“Call me if you need anything,” Vivian said. “Promise?”

“Yes, mother,” I said before we both hung up. I was dying to know what Vivian was being so close-mouthed about, but I was also glad we were meeting tomorrow and not later that day. I had something planned that didn’t involve my friends.

The night before, I had made up my mind that it was time to pass by my firm and just sort of check in. I was still officially on a leave of absence, and I wasn’t expected to visit on any regular schedule. But it had been more than two weeks since I’d gone into the halls of Weber, Miranda, Blanco, et al., and I knew that I should show my face.

I also needed distraction from the Luther situation, to ground myself in something familiar. I reminded myself that I
did
have a life before he called me up: a husband, a son, a fulfilling career. I couldn’t figure out why Luther was threatening all that. I supposed it was possible that I wasn’t as happy as I thought. I couldn’t tell whether what I felt for Luther was real, feelings long buried by circumstances, or just some kind of bizarre early midlife crisis. The more I thought about it, the less I knew. It was flattering to hear everything that Luther said to me, but Ariel had said all the same things many times before. And I knew that it was impossible to keep the same level of intensity in a marriage that had existed in the beginning.

I knew a lot of things. I also knew that Luther and I had unfinished business between us. Our relationship hadn’t run its course, I understood that now. Our lives had kept us apart, not our feelings for each other. He had gone back to his WASP life, and I had immersed myself in the life of a Miami Cuban exile. We had each sought our roots. It might have been what we both really wanted, but it might have just been the easiest road to take.

Luther and I had never really fought to stay together and make our relationship a success. It had been too easy to say that the differences in our backgrounds would keep it from working. Looking back on how things ended for us, I saw that we were both scared to be the one who tried hardest.

I married Ariel, a fellow Cuban American who didn’t share my social class or background—it might sound shallow, but it was the truth—in part because of our shared ethnicity. I couldn’t deny that Ariel’s being Cuban was a major factor in my picking him as a mate. After seven years of living in the north away from my roots, I was looking for a man who saw the world as I did, who understood the tragedy of the exile experience and who would know what Cuba meant to me. The fact that he was intelligent, attractive, and ambitious hadn’t hurt his chances, either. He was everything I wanted. And he openly cherished me.

So why was I considering getting involved with Luther? I was taught in law school to think a certain way, to analyze every situation from different angles. Luther had been back in my life for less than a week, and I had devoted an inordinate amount of time to thinking about him. The lawyer inside me couldn’t help but think about how many billable hours I’d racked up.

I was, if anything, more amazed now by Luther’s declaration than I had been when he made it. I thought I knew him pretty well, and I never thought he was capable of such passionate feeling, and that he’d had the patience to wait for the right opportunity to speak with me. And as for his learning Spanish, I still remembered how he would struggle in Fren
ch restaurants ordering dinner, so I knew how much time and effort he must have spent learning a new language. He had proved to me that he had meticulously planned his proposal, and that he wasn’t treating my feelings lightly.

Apart from holding hands at the Dinner Key Marina, we hadn’t had any physical contact. I knew I might have been unfaithful to Ariel in my thoughts, but so far I hadn’t broken anything that couldn’t be fixed. But it wouldn’t be long before Ariel realized that something deeper than a spat with my mother was making me distant and preoccupied. He was too perceptive not to figure out that something seriously wrong was between us.

Even with all the years that had passed, thinking of the sex life I had once enjoyed with Luther was enough to make me blush. I don’t think there was a centimeter of his body that I hadn’t explored, and vice versa.

I got on the expressway, shaking my head. What a mess.